“Shhh. You’ll wake the damned dog.”
“She’s probably curled up next to my mother. My cat is in there, too.” She was looking at him. Big light brown eyes that had always stabbed right at him. He dreamed about her eyes at night. Among other things.
There was no woman he had ever wanted more than he did the one in his arms. Dom had long accepted that.
She was…Madison.
There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to keep her safe. To make her world a little bit better. Somehow. He held her, as tight as he possibly could. He wanted to hold her tonight. Was that so damned wrong?
He held her while she cried, quietly. Until she fell asleep in his arms.
Dom stayed right where he was. This…was torture. Why did he keep doing this to himself?
This woman had the power to destroy him.
She had him. The woman just didn’t know that. Dom slipped out from beneath her probably too many hours later to think about. His damned hand was numb, where she’d pressed on it for so long. There were still tear tracks on her beautiful face. One look at her could break a man. He understood that.
He was no different than Gunnar or Jarrod, or Jake or the rest. He was gone over this woman, completely.
And he always would be.
A sound from the hall had him turning. His father stood there.
Watching.
“You know, life without them is far worse than life with them. Something to consider. Cherise and Max—worth the risk. I don’t regret it at all.”
Dom shook his head. He couldn’t do this now. Not tonight. Not when people he cared about could have lost what—who—mattered most.
Dom bent down, and slipped an arm behind her knees and behind her back. He lifted. He carried her down the hallway toward her mother’s guest room. Madison never stirred.
He lowered her to the bed and covered temptation.
Less than two minutes later, he stepped back out into the hallway.
“You staying, too?”
Dom nodded. He didn’t feel right leaving her tonight.
Dom settled on the couch. It was a long time until he slept.
25
He was never doingsomething that stupid again. That was a realization he’d come to late in the night on that damned couch. He wasn’t going to risk that ever again. He’d wanted nothing more than to curl up next to her and hold her safe in the night. Only that his father and her mother would be right on the other side of the wall had held him back. Had kept him from making a damned mistake.
Nothing could come from being with her. All he would manage to do was screw it up—and then they’d have to deal with the fallout. How would that work with their family around all the time? He’d have to see her and know—no. It was best that he kept his hands to himself.
And concentrate on his damned job. Period.
It was mid-morning before Dom got the all-clear from the nurse working the charge station to go into Heather’s room. It was definitely a nurse he did not want to cross.
She was too terrifying.
His step-mother gave him a firm look when he approached. He had seen her not even two hours ago—at her breakfast table, with his father, Max, and Madison already there. He’d eaten thebreakfast Cherise had made without protest. Otherwise, she’d have made him. She was as small as her daughter, but she could be a bitfierce.
Especially when she wasmotheringone of them. It had taken Dom a while to get used to that. His own mother barely contacted him at all. And hadn’t really in years—since he’d moved in with his father as a teenager.
“What are you doing up here?” Dom asked. He adored this woman almost as much—and in a completely different way—as his father did. She usually worked the ER. She was a dayshift supervisor, on from eight until six each day, four days a week. Similar hours as Dom’s father. But most of her time was spent downstairs. Where all the main chaos happened.
